tue, and regarded the other with a
scowl. The men guffawed, and after a second the boys also. Then a
little fellow behind the ringleader offered additional testimony.

"He said he used to get up a private circus once a week, every
Saturday, and charge ten cents a head, and made ten dollars a week,"
he said. Then his voice of angry accusation ended in a chuckle.

Anderson kept his face quite grave, but all the others joined in the
chorus of merriment. The little fellow backed against the iron fence
gave an incredulous start at the sound of the laughter, then the red
roses faded out on his smooth cheeks and he went quite white. The
laughter stung his very soul as no recrimination could have done. He
suffered tortures of mortified pride. His fists were still clinched,
but his proud lip quivered a little. He looked very young--a baby.

Anderson stepped to his aid. He raised his voice. "Now, look here,
boys," he said. But he made no headway against the hilarity, which
swelled higher and higher. The crowd increased. Several more men and
boys were on the outskirts. An ally pressed through the crowd to
Anderson's side.

"Now, boys," he proclaimed, and for a moment his thin squeak weighted
with importance gained a hearing--"now, boys," said the barber, "this
little feller's father is an extinguished new denizen of Banbridge,
and you ain't treatin' of him with proper disrespect. Now--" But then
his voice was drowned in a wilder outburst than ever. The little
crowd of men and boys went fairly mad with hysterical joy of mirth,
as an American crowd will when once overcome by the humor of the
situation in the midst of their stress of life. They now laughed at
the little barber and the boy. The old familiar butt had joined
forces with the new ones.

"They have formed a trust," said Amidon, deserting his partisanship,
now that it had assumed this phase of harmless jocularity.

But the boy at bay, as the laughter at his expense increased, was
fairly frantic. He lost what he had hitherto retained, his
self-possession. "I tell you I did!" he suddenly screamed out, in a
sweet screech, like an angry bird, which commanded the ears of the
crowd from its strangeness. "I tell you I did have an elephant, I did
ride him, and I did have a circus every Saturday afternoon, so there!"

The "so there" was tremendous. The words vanished in the sound. The
boyish expression denoting triumphant climax became individual, the
language of one soul. H